Two weeks ago I had a nice conversation with Prof. Schamiloglu in his office, a conversation you can listen to below. Before 9/11, he told me, he didn’t think of himself as a Muslim American but just a Tatar American. “It’s really both funny and sad how after 9/11, 2001, whether we like it or not, Muslim Americans are classified as Muslim Americans.”

Although he wanted to study international relations initially, Prof. Schamiloglu explained how he ended up teaching and researching Muslim culture (:56 in the video clip). Asked how he would respond to people who think Islam is a violent and backward religion, Prof. Schamiloglu pointed out that much of the negative image of Islam is fed by misinformation, and that the same thing had occurred in the past (1:37).

Prof. Schamiloglu recommended two news sources to people who want to have a better understanding of the current events in the Muslim world (4:44):